Forced sterilization in Peru

Forced sterilization in Peru was part of a larger effort variably described as the ethnic cleansing or genocide of indigenous peoples of Peru that occurred under the government of Alberto Fujimori through his National Population Program, with the such projects first being outlined in the Plan Verde of the Peruvian Armed Forces. More than 300,000 Peruvians – the majority impoverished or indigenous women – were sterilized during the Fujimori administration. The generational shift from the sterilizations resulted with the decimation of rural economies and increased poverty in those regions.[1]

Part of a series on
Genocide
of Indigenous peoples
Issues
Sub-Saharan Africa
Americas (history)
East, South, Southeast Asia
Europe and North Asia
Oceania
West Asia / North Africa
Related topics

Background

Population control measures, especially relating to ethnicity, began to appear during the 20th century in Peru.[2] The elites of Peru adopted the theory of eugenics in the 1920s and 1930s, requiring pre-marriage examinations that would ban unions that involved individuals determined to be "unfit".[2] In the 1930s, the Peruvian government actively promoted the immigration of white Europeans.[2]

Modern concerns over population control in Peru after the eugenics movements of the 1930's and 40's stemmed from rapid demographic changes.[3] The population began to urbanize quickly and improvements in healthcare led to mortality declines, while birth rates remained stable at around six children per woman in 1972.[3] As the sexual revolution progressed in the United States and abroad, there came calls for increased access to birth control methods among women in Peru.[3] While feminist groups were active in advocating for the middle class, mostly urban women of the time, class and ethnicity were a factor in this movement. Female activists of the middle class had much better access to birth control methods and reproductive health services than poor, rural, largely indigenous women.[3] After the collapse of the military regime in the 1980's, the first attempts at widening access to birth control were made under the administration of Fernando Belaúnde.[3] The 1981 census showed that the average birth rate remained just above five children per woman, and that those living in areas with the highest birth rates did not want more children.[3] The administration established a national population council and introduced family planning services into hospitals. These efforts were largely confined to urban centers and did not reach the rural, mostly indigenous population.[3] These efforts were continued by president Alan García in the following years, along with the Church and those on the political left.[3] While the Catholic Church supported efforts to control population growth, they disagreed with the use of modern birth control methods. Instead, they promoted "responsible parenthood" and traditional methods.[3] Fearing backlash from the Church, the 1985 legislation chose not to attempt to legalize voluntary sterilization and abortion, much to the disappointment of Peruvian feminists.[3]

Plan Verde
Main article: Plan Verde

In the 1980s, Peru was a country that had long been subordinate to an oligarchy in its society and as a result, the class divide between a handful of "powerful individuals" and the remaining "poor and impotent majority" was significant.[4] The Peruvian armed forces, frustrated with the inability of the Alan García administration to handle the nation's crises, including the internal conflict in Peru, began to draft a plan to overthrow his government and establish a neoliberal government.[5][6] According to Peruvian sociologist and political analyst Fernando Rospigliosi, Peru's business elites held relationships with the military planners, with Rospigliosi writing that businesses "probably provided the economic ideas which [the military] agreed with, the necessity of a liberal economic program as well as the installment of an authoritarian government which would impose order".[7]

In one of the plan's volumes titled Driving Peru into the XXI century, the military planned to sterilize impoverished citizens in what Rospigliosi described as "ideas frankly similar to the Nazis", with the military writing that "the general use of sterilization processes for culturally backward and economically impoverished groups is convenient", describing these groups as "unnecessary burdens" and that "given their incorrigible character and lack of resources ... there is only their total extermination".[8]

According to Peruvian magazine Oiga, the armed forces finalized plans on 18 June 1990 involving multiple scenarios for a coup to be executed on 27 July 1990, the day prior to the inauguration of Alberto Fujimori.[9] The magazine noted that in one of the scenarios, titled "Negotiation and agreement with Fujimori. Bases of negotiation: concept of directed Democracy and Market Economy", Fujimori was to be directed on accepting the military's plan at least twenty-four hours before his inauguration.[9] Rospigliosi states "an understanding was established between Fujimori, Montesinos and some of the military officers" involved in Plan Verde prior to Fujimori's inauguration.[7][8] Fujimori would go on to adopt many of the policies outlined in Plan Verde.[6][7]

National Population Program
Main article: National Population Program

We were required to perform a certain number of sterilizations each month. This was obligatory and if we did not comply, we were fired. Many providers did not inform women that they were going to be sterilized - they told them that the procedure was something else. But I felt this was wrong. I preferred to offer women a bag of rice to convince them to accept the procedure and explained to them beforehand what was going to happen.[10]

— Ministry of Health physician

The Fujimori government, especially the offices of the presidency and prime minister, determined that sterilizations were a primary tool for economic development, revealing their intentions regarding population control.[2] In 1991, a new National Population Program was developed by Fujimori's National Population Council.[10] With the compliance of Fujimori, plans for a coup as designed in Plan Verde were prepared over a two-year period and finally executed during the 1992 Peruvian coup d'état, which ultimately established a civilian-military regime and began the institution of objectives presented in Plan Verde.[11][6][9] In 1993, a National Report on Population and Development of the Fujimori government argued that the previous program was insufficient and promoted large expansions for the program.[12] That same year, the prime minister's report titled "Basic Social Policy Guidelines" was largely influential on population policy, arguing that population projections would leave Peru unable to provide basic social services.[2] The "Social Policy: Situation and Perspectives" document also presented that permanent birth control targeted for the poor was one of thirteen main economic recovery policies of the Fujimori administration.[2] The Fujimori-appointed program director Eduardo Yong Motta contacted clinics weekly demanding increased quotas according to staff while Fujimori's well-known micromanaging techniques also resulted with the president even visiting regional program leaders directly to demand increased sterilizations.[2]

Prior to the program, there were less than 15,000 sterilizations performed per year and women could only have the operation performed "if they had a health risk, four or more children, or were above a certain age".[10] However, after 1995 when sterilizations began to be performed, there were no pre-existing conditions necessary for sterilizations other than that women had to be considered part of Peru's poor and disenfranchised community. In addition, the number of annual sterilization procedures rose after the program's implementation from 15,000 to 67,000 in 1996 and 115,000 in 1997.[10] Most of the personnel hired to perform sterilizations were not properly trained, much of the equipment used was outdated or lacking in quality and the counseling services provided to patients were also backed by poorly trained staff, with many women not being given "quality information prior to procedures".[10]

Fujimori utilized feminist language to manipulate the discourse surrounding family planning in Peru and placed population control at a greater importance than human rights.[2] In total, more than 300,000 Peruvians were victims of forced sterilization in the 1990s, with the majority being affected by the National Population Program.[13][14]

Analysis

Ethnic cleansing and genocide

The plan's forced sterilization of vulnerable groups through the Programa Nacional de Población has been variably described as an ethnic cleansing or genocidal operation.[15][16][17][18] According to Back and Zavala, the plan was an example of ethnic cleansing as it targeted indigenous and rural women.[15] Jocelyn E. Getgen of Cornell University wrote that the systemic nature of sterilizations and the mens rea of officials who drafted the plan proved an act of genocide.[19] The Centro Amazónico de Antropología y Aplicación Práctica non-profit stated that the act "was the largest genocide since [Peru's] colonization".[20] The policy of sterilizations resulted in a generational shift that included a smaller younger generation that could not provide economic stimulation to rural areas, making such regions more impoverished.[1]

Official figures

The Public Ministry determined that between 1996 and 2001, a total of 2,091 women suffered forced sterilizations,[21] a figure that would represent less than 1% of the total sterilizations that, according to data from the Ombudsman's Office, were practiced on 272,028 people.

In the Prosecutor's Office there are 2,166 complaints for cases of non-voluntary sterilization, while 3,761 women registered in the Registry of Victims of Forced Sterilizations (Reviesfo) of the Peruvian Ministry of Justice. This body was able to identify 5,097 women who suffered sterilizations against their will.[22]

Foreign involvement

According to Peru's congressional subcommittee investigations, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Nippon Foundation supported the sterilization efforts of the Fujimori government.[23][24] However, a US congressional investigation led by members of the religious right, who were deeply opposed to sterilization, found no evidence USAID was funding forced sterilizations.[25][10]

Aftermath

The International Criminal Court condemned the Fujimori government's actions, describing them as crimes against humanity.[14] Human rights groups filed a complaint to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 1999 on behalf of Mamerita Mestanza Chavez, who was intimidated into being sterilized, received no medical assistance before or after the procedure and later died as a result.[14]

The Peruvian government, however, had little involvement with responding to the hundreds of thousands of Peruvians forcibly sterilized and has actively blocked investigations, especially when Fujimorists that led the Congress of Peru through the 2010s.[14][26] In July 2016, a public prosecutor argued that Fujimori and his government staff could not face trial for sterilizations, saying that any forced sterilizations occurred in "isolated" incidents by individual medical personnel.[17] A case against former president Alberto Fujimori involving thousands of woman plaintiffs has been on hold since 2002.[26] Fujimori, who was already convicted and imprisoned for other crimes against humanity, was to face trial for the sterilization program under his government, though Judge Rafael Martinez blocked the trial, ruling that when Fujimori was extradited from Chile, the charges for forced sterilizations were not present in the extradition request.[26] In order to face trial, the Supreme Court of Chile would have to authorize the prosecution of Fujimori for the forced sterilization charges.[26]

Efforts have been led by both by citizens and the government to gain justice and further understand the impacts of the forced sterilizations. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was formed in 2001 with the general goal of investigating the twenty years of internal conflict between the Shining Path/rondas campesinas and the Peruvian armed forces.[27] One specific struggle has been in defining the forced sterilizations as a form of sexual violence. Feminist and human rights organizations introduced Decree 2906 which would expand the definition of sexual violence during armed conflict to include the forced sterilizations, along with forced pregnancy, abortion, prostitution, and sex slavery.[27] However, the Ministry of Justice heavily opposed the decree. Broadening the definition would "mean admitting that the Peruvian state was the primary perpetrator of sexual violence during the twenty-year period under investigation by the TRC - not via the armed forces but via the Ministry of Health."[27] Decree 2906 was passed in 2012, expanding the reparable categories of sexual violence, but still excluded the sterilization campaign.[27]

References
  1. "Mass sterilisation scandal shocks Peru". BBC News. 2002-07-24. Retrieved 2021-08-04.
  2. Ewig, Christina (Fall 2006). "Hijacking Global Feminism: Feminists, the Catholic Church, and the Family Planning Debacle in Peru". Feminist Studies. 32 (3): 633–659, 670. doi:10.2307/20459109. JSTOR 20459109.
  3. Boesten, Jelke (2007). "Free Choice or Poverty Alleviation? Population Politics in Peru under Alberto Fujimori". European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies (82): 3–20. doi:10.18352/erlacs.9637. ISSN 0924-0608. JSTOR 25676252.
  4. Gorman, Stephen M. "The Economic and Social Foundations of Elite Power in Peru: A Review of the Literature." Social and Economic Studies , Vol. 29, No. 2/3 (June/September 1980), pp. 292-319
  5. Burt, Jo-Marie (September–October 1998). "Unsettled accounts: militarization and memory in postwar Peru". NACLA Report on the Americas. Taylor & Francis. 32 (2): 35–41. doi:10.1080/10714839.1998.11725657. the military's growing frustration over the limitations placed upon its counterinsurgency operations by democratic institutions, coupled with the growing inability of civilian politicians to deal with the spiraling economic crisis and the expansion of the Shining Path, prompted a group of military officers to devise a coup plan in the late 1980s. The plan called for the dissolution of Peru's civilian government, military control over the state, and total elimination of armed opposition groups. The plan, developed in a series of documents known as the "Plan Verde," outlined a strategy for carrying out a military coup in which the armed forces would govern for 15 to 20 years and radically restructure state-society relations along neoliberal lines.
  6. Alfredo Schulte-Bockholt (2006). "Chapter 5: Elites, Cocaine, and Power in Colombia and Peru". The politics of organized crime and the organized crime of politics: a study in criminal power. Lexington Books. pp. 114–118. ISBN 978-0-7391-1358-5. important members of the officer corps, particularly within the army, had been contemplating a military coup and the establishment of an authoritarian regime, or a so-called directed democracy. The project was known as 'Plan Verde', the Green Plan. ... Fujimori essentially adopted the 'Plan Verde,' and the military became a partner in the regime. ... The autogolpe, or self-coup, of April 5, 1992, dissolved the Congress and the country's constitution and allowed for the implementation of the most important components of the 'Plan Verde.'
  7. Avilés, William (Spring 2009). "Despite Insurgency: Reducing Military Prerogatives in Colombia and Peru". Latin American Politics and Society. Cambridge University Press. 51 (1): 57–85. doi:10.1111/j.1548-2456.2009.00040.x. S2CID 154153310.
  8. Rospigliosi, Fernando (1996). Las Fuerzas Armadas y el 5 de abril: la percepción de la amenaza subversiva como una motivación golpista. Lima, Peru: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. pp. 28–40.
  9. "El "Plan Verde" Historia de una traición". Oiga. 647. 12 July 1993.
  10. Coe, Anna-Britt. "From Anti-Natalist to Ultra-Conservative: Restricting Reproductive Choice in Peru" Reproductive Health Matters, Vol. 12, No. 24, Power, Money and Autonomy in National Policies and Programmes (November 2004), pp. 56-69
  11. Cameron, Maxwell A. (June 1998). "Latin American Autogolpes: Dangerous Undertows in the Third Wave of Democratisation". Third World Quarterly. Taylor & Francis. 19 (2): 228. doi:10.1080/01436599814433. the outlines for Peru's presidential coup were first developed within the armed forces before the 1990 election. This Plan Verde was shown to President Fujimorti after the 1990 election before his inauguration. Thus, the president was able to prepare for an eventual self-coup during the first two years of his administration
  12. "1.6 Perú: Política y Plan Nacional de Población". Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática. Retrieved 2022-02-05.
  13. Gaussens, Pierre (2020). "The forced serilization of indigenous population in Mexico in the 1990s". Canadian Journal of Bioethics. 3 (3): 180+. doi:10.7202/1073797ar. S2CID 234586692. a government plan, developed by the Peruvian army between 1989 and 1990s to deal with the Shining Path insurrection, later known as the 'Green Plan', whose (unpublished) text expresses in explicit terms a genocidal intention
  14. Papaleo, Cristina (12 February 2021). "Peru: Hope for the victims of forced sterilizations | DW | 12.02.2021". Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 2022-02-06.
  15. Back, Michele; Zavala, Virginia (2018). Racialization and Language: Interdisciplinary Perspectives From Perú. Routledge. pp. 286–291. Retrieved 4 August 2021. At the end of the 1980s, a group of military elites secretly developed an analysis of Peruvian society called El cuaderno verde. This analysis established the policies that the following government would have to carry out in order to defeat Shining Path and rescue the Peruvian economy from the deep crisis in which it found itself. El cuaderno verde was passed onto the national press in 1993, after some of these policies were enacted by President Fujimori. ... It was a program that resulted in the forced sterilization of Quechua-speaking women belonging to rural Andean communities. This is an example of 'ethnic cleansing' justified by the state, which claimed that a properly controlled birth rate would improve the distribution of national resources and thus reduce poverty levels. ... The Peruvian state decided to control the bodies of 'culturally backward' women, since they were considered a source of poverty and the seeds of subversive groups
  16. Gaussens, Pierre (2020). "The forced serilization of indigenous population in Mexico in the 1990s". Canadian Journal of Bioethics. 3 (3): 180+. doi:10.7202/1073797ar. S2CID 234586692. a government plan, developed by the Peruvian army between 1989 and 1990s to deal with the Shining Path insurrection, later known as the 'Green Plan', whose (unpublished) text expresses in explicit terms a genocidal intention
  17. Kravetz, Daniela (2017). "Promoting Domestic Accountability for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence: The Cases of Guatemala, Peru, and Colombia". American University International Law Review. 32 (2): 707–762.
  18. Carranza Ko, Ñusta (2020-09-04). "Making the Case for Genocide, the Forced Sterilization of Indigenous Peoples of Peru". Genocide Studies and Prevention. 14 (2): 90–103. doi:10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1740. ISSN 1911-0359. S2CID 225282614.
  19. Getgen, Jocelyn E. (Winter 2009). "Untold Truths: The Exclusion of Enforced Sterilizations from the Peruvian Truth Commission's Final Report". Third World Journal. 29 (1): 1–34. This Article argues that these systematic reproductive injustices constitute an act of genocide ... those individuals responsible for orchestrating enforced sterilizations against indigenous Quechua women arguably acted with the necessary mens rea to commit genocide since they knew or should have known that these coercive sterilizations would destroy, in whole or in part, the Quechua people. Highly probative evidence with which one could infer genocidal intent would include the Family Planning Program's specific targeting of poor indigenous women and the systematic nature of its quota system, articulated in the 1989 Plan for a Government of National Reconstruction, or 'Plan Verde.' ... The Plan continued by arguing ... the targeted areas possessed 'incorrigble characters' and lacked resources, all that was left was their 'total extermination.'
  20. "La esterilización forzada en Perú fue el mayor genocidio desde su colonización". Centro Amazónico de Antropología y Aplicación Práctica (CAAAP) (in Spanish). 2016-05-31. Retrieved 2021-08-04.
  21. "Decreto para atender a víctimas de esterilizaciones forzadas es constitucional". Ministerio de Justicia y Derechos Humanos del Perú. 10 November 2015. Retrieved 20 May 2020.
  22. "Registro de Víctimas de Esterilizaciones Forzadas". Reviesfo. Retrieved 20 May 2020.
  23. McMaken, Ryan (2018-10-26). "How the U.S. Government Led a Program That Forcibly Sterilized Thousands of Poor Peruvian Women in the 1990s | Ryan McMaken". Foundation for Economic Education. Retrieved 2021-08-04.
  24. "Informe final sobre la aplicación de la anticoncepción quirúrgica voluntaria (AQV) en los años 1990-2000" (PDF). Congress of Peru. June 2002.
  25. Chávez, Susana; Coe, Anna-Britt (17 May 2007). "Emergency Contraception in Peru: Shifting Government and Donor Policies and Influences". Reproductive Health Matters. 15 (29): 139–148. doi:10.1016/S0968-8080(07)29296-1. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
  26. "Peru's Fujimori can't be tried over forced sterilizations for now". France 24. 2021-12-03. Retrieved 2022-02-06.
  27. Citizenship on the Edge: Sex/Gender/Race. University of Pennsylvania Press. 2022. doi:10.2307/j.ctv1q6bnfd.11. ISBN 978-0-8122-5367-2. JSTOR j.ctv1q6bnfd. S2CID 246641003.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.